Intelligent Data Centres Issue 25 | Page 18

GARTNER HAS PREDICTED THAT APPROXIMATELY 65 % OF ALL SERVERS WILL BE DEPLOYED IN EDGE DATA CENTRES BY 2025 .
DATA CENTRE PREDICTIONS
Ehab Kanary , Vice President of Enterprise Infrastructure for the Middle East and Africa at CommScope
In the absence of ‘ business as usual ’, enterprises and small businesses are moving to the cloud and this trend will only accelerate no matter what happens with the COVID-19 pandemic . Companies that were eyeing an eventual migration are now quickly moving to adopt a cloudbased paradigm for their businesses . Indeed , many companies that told workers to stay home have adopted remote working policies that rely on cloud-based applications , while retailers are following the lead of industry giants like Amazon and Noon in shifting sales tools to the cloud . In fact , these online retailers see growth thanks to the pandemic .
Another cloud-related trend we ’ ve observed is the accelerated adoption of private cloud infrastructure . Not too long ago , the prevailing wisdom was that everything would ultimately move to the public cloud . However , many companies have realised that they need to keep financial , healthcare and other sensitive information in private clouds . Some it passes . AI is being used to drive safety and security applications like automatic temperature checks , touchless authorisation , payment and control systems , and traffic monitoring , for example . AI is also being implemented for building management systems such as HVAC control and lighting .
Sophisticated AI algorithms are developed by processing large

GARTNER HAS PREDICTED THAT APPROXIMATELY 65 % OF ALL SERVERS WILL BE DEPLOYED IN EDGE DATA CENTRES BY 2025 .

networks , increased management efficiency and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic .
Social distancing restrictions and a significant drop in on-site retail shopping have prompted a substantial increase in online sales and significantly impacted data centres . Let ’ s take a closer look at these trends below .
Cloud migration will accelerate applications simply can ’ t be converted to the public cloud , while companies that maintain large data centres find private clouds less expensive than public clouds .
That said , we ’ re also seeing most enterprises adopting hybrid mixes of public and private clouds for their applications and data as a standard form of practice .
AI adoption will increase
Incorporation of Artificial Intelligence ( AI ) applications has been an ongoing trend for data centres and we see no sign of this slowing down . Much of this will be related to COVID-19 , although applications rolled out during the pandemic will likely remain once
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